Oil skimmers which utilize endless belts that are suspended into bodies of water having hydrocarbon contaminates on the surface are now well known. In operation as a belt is rotatively driven contaminates adhere to a descending reach of a belt as it enters a body of water. The adhered hydrocarbon contaminates are carried upwardly by an ascending reach of the belt to a wiping station, where they are removed from the belt and delivered to a collection station for suitable disposal.
In an effort to control ground water contamination resulting from, for example, spilled oil at a service station, it is not uncommon to drill a small monitoring well near the station. This small well is used to monitor the ground water in order to detect water contamination from service station spills in an early stage of contamination.
Once contamination is detected, one solution is to suspend an oil skimmer belt through a shaft of the monitoring well into the ground water below it. Operation of the skimmer relatively quickly removes contamination in the immediate vicinity of the well shaft. Following such removal relatively long periods of time elapse before contamination from surrounding earth strata flows into the vicinity of the pickup location enabling further contamination removal.
There have been many proposals for removing contamination from ground water, some of which seek to enhance the flow of contaminates into a pickup region. All such proposals have been relatively complex and expensive and as such are especially unsuitable for small pockets of contamination, such as in the vicinity of an automobile service station. Accordingly, there is a need for a simple enhanced system for removal of contaminates and relatively small pockets of contamination.